Dear Parent(s),
Happy February! This month is always exciting with Valentine’s Day and our fun classroom party. We are now officially halfway through the school year, so let’s make the second half even better than the first!
February tuition is $130.00 for the AM class and $80.00 for the PM class.
Miss Beth and Miss Denise
Attached is the February book order. Please return these book orders to school by Thursday, February 9th with your check made out to Grace Covenant Community Church. You can also place your order online using our class code, GL9CJ.
During Valentine’s Day week, we will be learning the letter V. As part of our plans for this letter, we will be making V Vests out of paper grocery bags. You will need to get a paper grocery bag (IGA has these, but you do have to ask for them), turn it inside out, and cut out arm holes, a head hole, and cut it up the front like a vest. This is a great opportunity for your child to practice scissors skills at home, particularly the straight cut in the front! We will transform these plain paper bag vests into V Vests in school! Please send one in for your child no later than Tuesday, February 14th.
Tuesday, February 14th is our Valentine’s Day party! Sign up in the hallway if you would like to bring in a SMALL treat for the class for our party. If you would like to bring in valentines for the rest of the class, I am sending home a class list. Also, if you have not yet sent in your coffee can, please do so ASAP!
We are well over halfway finished with our letter of the week curriculum and have moved on to slant letters—letters with slanted lines such as A, K, N, V, W, X, Y, Z and the round letters—O and Q. You can have your child practice these letters at home by writing letters in chocolate pudding, using cars to form letters on the carpet, forming letters out of spaghetti noodles or pretzel sticks, or searching for them on signs at the store. Make time for learning every day, and you will be sure to see progress in your child’s academic life!
Our nursery rhyme for the month of February will be “Old Mother Hubbard.”
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To fetch her dog a bone.
But when she got there, the cupboard was bare!
And so the poor dog had none.
We will be using this rhyme to make rhyming words, talk about how important it is to eat healthy foods, count dog bones, stock cupboard shelves, and learn new words (fetch, bare).
Our February themes will be Music (January 31-Feb 2), Friends and Family (Loving people) (February 7-16), and Healthy Bodies (February 21-March 1). For our music theme, we will learn AND do music. We will learn about different instruments, including the ones that we have on our bodies such as our hands to clap, feet to stomp, and voices to sing! We will learn about how music can sound- FORTE or piano (loud or soft), fast or slow, and high or low. We will, of course, create some music of our own as well! February 14 is Valentine’s Day, so for the second two weeks in February, we will be talking about love and how we can show love to our families and friends. Remember—Tuesday the 14th is our Valentine’s party at school! For our Healthy Bodies theme, we will be talking about how to take care of our bodies by eating healthy, exercising, and taking care of our teeth. We will take a look at the food guide pyramid for preschoolers and what foods and activities make our bodies healthy, as well as the ones that do not. On Thursday, February 23, we will be making fruit salad for our snack! There will be a sign-up sheet to bring fruit in for our fruit salad. We will finish that theme with a trip the whole way across the parking lot to the Common Grounds Café for a look at the inner workings of a restaurant (and enjoy a few treats, of course)! This trip will be Thursday, March 1.
A big thank-you for filling out the parent evaluations! Now, as we receive yours we will send home the evaluations we have done with your child in January. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call (837-5809) or email (GBPreK@hotmail.com), particularly if you are not the one who drops off and picks up your child and we do not have a chance to talk to you regularly. We do not do formal parent-teacher conferences unless we see a major problem, but we would be glad to meet with you if you would like. If you have not returned your evaluation, please do so as soon as possible. We are looking over them and will keep your goals in mind as we prepare your children for kindergarten. Please continue to work with your child at home by reading with him/her, identifying letters and numbers, working on letter sounds, writing, identifying patterns, and fine motor skills such as cutting and pasting. Also, we cannot emphasize enough the importance of reading with your child EVERYDAY! There are incredibly strong links between reading to your child at an early age and reading success later in school! Read, read, read!
Tuesday, February 7 —Coffee cans due
Thursday, February 9—Book Orders Due
Tuesday, February 14—Valentine’s Day Party V Vest Due
Thursday, February 23—Fruit Salad Day
Thursday, March 1—Trip to the Common
Grounds Café
Week 1: Music Letter: N Number: 4
Week 2: Loving Others Letter Review Number 5
Week 3: Loving Others Letter: V No Math
Week 4: Healthy Bodies Letter: W Number: 6
Week 5: Healthy Bodies Letter: K Number: 7
Prepared by: Stephen Stroup
Based upon the perspective of literacy provided above, as well as upon recommendations from the National Reading Panel (2000) and from Put Reading First: Helping Your Child Learn to Read (2001) we offer the following guidelines to help parents create a home environment that will support the literacy development of their young children:
1. Encourage children to use literacy in meaningful and purposeful ways, such as helping make shopping lists, drawing and writing thank-you notes, clipping coupons for family use, and reading road maps to plan a trip together.
2. Visit libraries and bookstores frequently and encourage children to check out materials, such as toys, tapes, CD Roms, and books, from libraries. Participate in activities held by libraries and bookstores, such as story times, writing contests, and summer reading programs.
3. Set aside time for reading alone or together as a family every day. Read a wide variety of materials, such as books, magazines, signs, and labels, with and to children.
4. Keep reading and writing materials, such as books, magazines, newspaper, paper, markers, crayons, scissors, glues, and stickers, accessible to children so that they can make use of these tools in a variety of language activities. (High quality reading and writing materials are not necessarily expensive. You can find them at school and library book fairs, yard and garage sales, online bookstores or auctions, book-stores' on-sale sections, used or second-hand bookstores, and charity sales [i.e., Salvation Army and Goodwill]).
5. Read books with rhymes and play language games, such as tongue twisters and puzzles, with your children.
6. Practice the alphabet by pointing out letters wherever you see them and by reading alphabet books.
7. Point out the letter-sound relationships your child is learning on labels, boxes, magazines and signs.
8. Keep a notebook, in which you, as the parent, write down stories that your children tell, so that the children see the connection between oral language and text.
9. Be a reader and writer, yourself. Children observe and learn from people around them.
10. Be patient and listen as your child “reads” books from school. Let your child know you are proud of his or her reading.
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